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Vladimir_Golovin comments on Misleading the witness - Less Wrong
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Say, you're starving and if you don't get a meal today, you'll die. In such situations, the choice between 15% chance of $1 million and a sure $500 boils down to a choice between 15% chance to survive today and a 100% chance to survive today (assuming that the meal costs less than $500.)
Perhaps the people who chose $500 operate in this 'starvation mode' by default.
The general term for "people who operate in starvation mode" is "the poor".
I doubt this is the case for most of the people who would take the $500 - I'd assume it's more that most of them couldn't or just didn't think to calculate the expectation value of a 15% chance at a million.
I think people are flipping the offer in their minds and comparing a sure $500 to an 85% chance of zilch.